Princeton, New Jersey— October 25, 2017— The Apereo Foundation, a non-profit organization which sponsors a range of open source projects and software communities serving higher education, today announced the incubation of EQUELLA, an award-winning digital repository for housing teaching/learning, research, media, and library content in one platform. Pearson is contributing EQUELLA as open source software in support of sustainability for EQUELLA customers, while increasing collaboration to create platform enhancements.

“As an EQUELLA user, my institution can now manage and prioritize its investment to drive progress in development, customization, integration, support, and hosting resources in such a way as to help move our institution and the product forward,” said Mara Hancock, CIO, VP Technology, California College of the Arts. “Our platform will be maintained by a dedicated community of developers and vendors, opening up new avenues for capabilities and features.”

EQUELLA was developed specifically for educational institutions over the last 15 years. It complements Apereo’s existing portfolio of education technology, joining 19 products including uPortal (the leading open source enterprise portal framework built by and for higher education institutions) and Sakai (a leading open source learning management system) as an innovative, community-driven, user-developed technology for the global higher education community.

“Contributing EQUELLA to an open source community allows for the sustainable development of leading-edge capabilities, enhancements, and features,” said Curtiss Barnes, Managing Director, Product Management and Design, Global Product, Pearson. “This transition is highly advantageous for our clients, as it gives EQUELLA a space to grow into increased functionality via a cost-effective development model.”

Adopters deploy EQUELLA for copyright resource collections; research materials; managing and exposing materials through websites and portals; content authoring; workflow; institutional policy; and organizational resources. EQUELLA is currently in use in a wide range of schools, universities, colleges, TAFEs, departments of education, government agencies, and corporations worldwide.

“The Apereo Foundation is excited to welcome EQUELLA, a crucial piece of higher education learning infrastructure, into its current range of open source education technology solutions,” said Ian Dolphin, Executive Director, Apereo Foundation. “Shared community development enables faster progress with higher quality and reduced costs for EQUELLA adopters. Importantly, institutions that rely on EQUELLA now have an increased range of support options. It’s about choice.”

Open source is a dominant development paradigm, providing EQUELLA customers with options to expand the platform with supporting technologies, open standards, containers, and interoperability. Open source also creates new opportunities for EQUELLA integration with other market-leading learning technologies. The open source release process mirrors Pearson’s existing EQUELLA release strategy, demonstrating the viability of proprietary software transitioning to open source.

The inclusion of EQUELLA in Apereo’s incubation process offers adopters an ecosystem of vendors for custom development, technical support, hosting, and additional services. Vendors include Edalex Solutions, Next Education Services, and Unicon. For more information on EQUELLA and Apereo, visit www.apereo.org/projects/equella and https://equella.github.io/.

About Apereo
The Apereo Foundation exists to help educational institutions collaborate to develop, use and sustain open source software for learning, teaching and research. It is a membership organization, with members on four continents. Membership ranges from community colleges to major research-intensive institutions. Apereo currently supports nineteen software solutions, which are listed at www.apereo.org. The Apereo Foundation is a non-profit corporation registered in New Jersey.

About Pearson
Pearson is the world’s learning company, with expertise in educational courseware and assessment, and a range of teaching and learning services powered by technology. Our mission is to help people make progress through access to better learning. We believe that learning opens up opportunities, creating fulfilling careers and better lives. For more, visit www.pearson.com.

About Edalex Solutions
Edalex is a solutions company that delivers a range of solutions for the education sector. With deep expertise in the digital repository and learning management sector, and strong engagement with educational institutions across the Asia Pacific region, Edalex delivers proven results for both clients and partners. The Edalex Solutions leadership team averages more than a decade of experience in the education industry and extensive expertise with EQUELLA. Find out more at edalexsolutions.com.

About Next Education Services
Next Education Services provides a range of services within the digital learning space. The company specializes in digital platforms for education and has worked with the essential platforms that make up a modern e-learning solution, which includes SIS, MLE, as well as Digital Repositories. A major focus of our services and experience is centered around the widely used Digital Repository, EQUELLA. Visit http://nextedservices.com/ to learn more.

About Unicon
Unicon is a leading provider of technology consulting, services, and support for the education industry. Institutions and corporations leverage Unicon’s domain expertise across numerous disciplines, including identity and access management (IAM), learning analytics/student success, standards-based integration, portals, content lifecycle, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Unicon’s depth of experience in designing, building, integrating, operating, and supporting learning, assessment, and institutional systems ensures the right skills and technologies are applied to every engagement. Unicon is a Contributing Member of IMS Global Learning Consortium; a Commercial Affiliate of the Apereo Foundation; a Trust and Identity Solution Provider in the Internet2 Industry Program and an Industry Member of Internet2; an InCommon Participant; an Instructure Certified Partner; a Desire2Learn (D2L) Technology Partner; a GSA Industry Partner and Schedule 70 Contract Holder; an Advanced Consulting Partner in the AWS Partner Network, a member of the AWS Education Competency Program, and a member of the AWS Public Sector Program. For more information, visit: www.unicon.net.